


Aint Gonna Whistle Dixie No More

by superblackmarket



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 02:36:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4042537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superblackmarket/pseuds/superblackmarket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(The South is in his blood, whether Daryl likes it or not.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aint Gonna Whistle Dixie No More

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MermaidSheenaz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MermaidSheenaz/gifts).



> For the lovely Sheenaz.

Dixons were southern as they come. But his ma, she aspired to more. The red hills of Georgia weren’t enough. She dreamed a different history.

Round the time her youngest son was born, she started telling folks that her people were Irish. And maybe they were; who could remember that far? She had black hair and wild eyes.

Just another excuse ta jump in her cups, her husband said. She aint Irish any more’n Injun Joe. Rest of us don’t need no special reason ta get hammered, aint life enough? But her, she gotta be special. She gotta be _Irish._  

And maybe she was. There were the songs she sang, _So fill to me the parting glass, goodnight and joy be with you all,_ they had to come from somewhere, wasn’t nobody singing those songs round these parts.

The youngest son was beautiful. A mop of sandy blonde hair, a pointed little face, and the biggest, bluest eyes you ever seen this side of the Mississippi. Coddled by his ma, when she remembered. Scrapped like an alley cat with the kids in town, and sometimes when he came home dirty and scabbed, she’d stub out her cigarette in the potted plant and call him over. She’d clean his face and hands, sit him on the tub, and go to work. Lips colored Rouge in Love, eyelids painted Summer Denim. _The minstrel boy to the war is gone,_ she sang in her high breathy voice, holding the mascara wand and telling him to blink. _In the ranks of death you’ll find him._

Painted up, the youngest son looked strange and fey. So beautiful, enough to make you cry. And she did cry. She balanced her glass of sherry on the toilet seat and turned his chin to and fro with her fingertips. Blushed his cheeks Peony, but he didn’t need it so she took it off. Beautiful. Like a doll or a daughter.

Oblivious, he’d go back to his dirt and his toys when she was through with him.

Her husband beat her when he caught them at it, a vicious backhand that left her cheek swollen and purple for days to come. The elder son, who happened to be out of juvie at the time, grabbed his brother by the scruff of the neck and bundled him down to the crick. He shoved him facedown in the water and held him there til he was half-drowned and the makeup was gone and he was all boy again.

Merle didn’t have to tell him. Follow her down boy, and you bound to die.

She was witchy, his ma. Cast her own kind of spells. Hexes against her husband, or potions to keep his love forever. He watched her take the shotgun, with its sawed off muzzle, and send seven shells into the netherworld of hell, which was really a dried-up well. Then she sent him to steal one of the neighbor’s white chickens, which she slaughtered and cut the heart out of, so her husband could never break the spell.

She’d leave your bones in the haunted ground, if she could.

But her magic was dry as that sorry well. So she pulled her youngest son into her lap and cried. Sometimes rocking, sometimes singing. _The minstrel boy to the war is gone…_

_In the ranks of death you’ll find him_

_His father’s sword he has girded on_

_And his wild harp slung behind him_

Then she dried her eyes and told him to keep an eye out for his chupacabra.

Hell, he told Rick later, she mighta been madder’n March but least her compass always pointed north, ya know?

Him, he could never be so sure, so he had his brother tattoo the North Star on the web between his thumb and forefinger.

His ma, she held him close in her last year. Fed him with her own hand, like maybe she felt bad she’d been vain of her breasts when he was born and wouldn’t give him a drop so the older brother had to give him badly mixed formula from a bottle.

He was fidgeting. The older brother, twelve years his senior, was starting to hold more allure than his ma and her red wine kisses, but he tried his damndest. Knowing, somehow, that she was the fragile pin in the grenade, and as soon as she was pulled, the rest of them’d be blown to hell.

There was nothing left to remember her by. Even before the turn he moved light, his brother’s bowie knife, his da’s revolver, and his own crossbow slung behind him.

Couple fragments of folk tunes, maybe. Phrases and snippets of melody came back to him every so often. There was a high singing voice in his head at the CDC, when the doctor told them they were minutes from going up in a fiery supernova. It was the first time he had been truly afraid. He was chaos but he wasn’t _entropy_ , and he would not go gentle into that heat-death goodnight.

Thanks to Rick, he didn’t have to die like his ma, burnt down to nothing. From behind his truck he watched the place explode in a towering inferno of flame and heat, and the air bent and rippled around them. Inside his head he screamed and screamed, terror rolling off his skin like sweat. _Good night and joy be with you all._

 

xxx

 

Merle said it was a good thing, when he ended up in the hospital at fifteen with a shattered eyesocket and a fractured skull and a twice broken nose. Too damn pretty for his own good, Merle told him, he’d thank his daddy later for ruining his good looks. Wasn’t natural for a boy to be so pretty, it made the lads look as well as the lassies. And that was something Merle would not have. Least no one will take you for a girl no more Darlena, Merle said, not with that ugly new mug of yours. Ugliest face in Georgia.

It wasn’t a face any momma would put makeup on, that was for damn sure.

Grown up, he felt himself turning to wax, all his outlines blurring away.

But after the turn, after a few weeks on the road with Rick, he had hardened into granite and was busy carving himself anew. The incipient beer belly, the deceptive softness, it all fell away. He was bone and blood now, muscle and sinew. Body honed on the edge of a knife. An angular face, gaunt when they starved. The cheekbones high and sharp, like his ma’s. Eyes all his own after the beating, narrow and watchful and slanted upward like a cat’s.

Not a beautiful face. Not one his ma would recognize. Most people wouldn’t look twice. But those who did, look twice that is, they kept on looking.

 

xxx

 

A year later, all them sitting round a campfire in the prison yard, he traveled back in time to the lilt of the youngest Greene girl’s voice. _And all the harm I’ve ever done, alas it was to none but me._

One of his ma’s old songs, drifting out into the night again.

_But since it falls unto my lot_

_That I should rise and you should not_

He was the last one, the last Dixon standing. His ma, risen on a puff of smoke. His da, and probably his brother too, fallen down down down. They hadn’t left much of a legacy, none of them southern redneck bastards. But the end of the world was a great equalizer, where being a Dixon didn’t mean much different from being a Grimes or a Greene. Hell, it even had its advantages.

He squatted in the dirt and dragged up fistfuls of grass, waiting for Rick to put an end to it and tell them to turn in. Rick did, then went to bicker with Lori and her big belly. He felt bad for the kid in there, but figured the world as it was today wasn’t much worse than the one he’d been born into. Just less hypocritical. Less pretending.

His ma, she spent her whole life pretending, long as he’d known her anyway. Funny, how the apocalypse made him think of her again after so many years of forgetting. All her old songs coming back.

Sing another one, old Hershel said. Not saying, let’s drown out the arguing.

He edged closer to hear the Greene girl sing. The dead motherfuckers groaned and rattled the fences.

 

xxx

 

Ireland, huh? he asked his ma. He’d just shot a Woodbury soldier wearing a shirt that said Kiss Me I’m Irish.

Well la-la-la auld Ireland, sorry brother, he wouldn’t have known a wild harp if it sprang up and bit him on the balls. His crossbow was his instrument and he played it like a master. If he was joining the ranks of death and all, a bow seemed like the better investment.

He hummed to himself as he led the Woodbury folk on a merry fox chase round the town, covering his tracks with gunfire and smoke grenades. Gambling his life for a few extra minutes that would see Rick and Glenn and Maggie and Oscar safely over the wall. La-la-la, Ireland something, la-dee-dah.

He meant to be caught eventually, never mind what he told Rick, this was _Merle_ , and he wasn’t leaving his blood behind again, no matter how many times that blood may have left him behind in the past.

Ducking and dodging now, out of ammo, his quiver empty. They were closing in on him. He’d have to stage his surrender soon, but surrendering, it didn’t come natural to him. Even when it was part of the master plan. Well, maybe not _plan_ ; master plans were Rick’s province, while he improvised on his feet. Hmm-hmm-hmm, the minstrel boy to the war is gone.

Shit ma, he thought a few minutes later, with his back against the wall. Your auld songs never ended too happily, did they?

_The minstrel fell! But the foe-man’s chain_

_Could not bring this proud soul under_

_The harp he loved never spoke again_

_For he tore its chords asunder_  
  
He looked down at his crossbow, clutched tightly in his fist. Time to put his hands up, he thought. The Governor’s men were advancing, his brother nowhere to be seen, and he began to wonder if he hadn’t miscalculated. _I have to find my brother._ For all he knew, Merle was already dead, bleeding out in the street.

With his knife, he severed the string of his crossbow. Then he dropped the weapon and raised his hands.

Unlike harps and dead warrior-bards, crossbows were replaceable.

But you’re not, Rick said later, checking him over for injury.

 

xxx

 

Gone to war but the war was a non-war, with only one casualty he cared about. The prison expanded into a beehive of activity while he was still cleaning his brother’s blood out from under his fingernails.

He wanted to slip past the gates like a shadow and lose himself in the woods. Find a tree to sit under, his crossbow on his knee, hmm-hmm-hmm, the minstrel boy, just him and his memories.

But he never got round to it. By then, him and Rick had taken to exploring the dark corners of the prison all by themselves.

Deep in the tombs, head thrown back to expose the pale column of his throat, all heat and static electricity. Lining his body up with Rick’s. Your mouth on mine, our hearts racing together, this is my cock, this is yours, now how the hell is it all supposed to work?

Oh, he said, _oh,_ with a passing thought for his virginity. Was he like this, degenerate, because his ma had painted his face, Rouge in Love and Summer Denim, when he was small? Was it the curl of his eyelashes, the stain of his bitten lips that drove Rick so wild? _Bluest eyes this side of the Mississippi._

Are you his bitch now? sneered Merle. You gonna let him take you just like that, boy?

I want you to, he told Rick. Does it hurt?

Only as pleasure hurts. When it consumes you like fire, a woman passed out in bed with a cigarette trailing from her hand, and then spits you out again. Reborn like a phoenix. An ugly little hatchling at first, raw and new, then slowly coming into its glorious plumage.

You witch me, Grimes? he demanded after it was over, thinking of his ma, the seven shotgun shells sent to the netherworld of hell and the blood of the slaughtered white chicken sprinkling the dirt.

More like the other way around, Rick said. You really have no idea, do you? Those fucking _eyes_ of yours… Everything you do, you bastard, it’s the way you walk, the way you eat, the way you… Rick showed him the rest.

Well got-damn. He began to think that maybe this had nothing to do with the youngest son and his pretty, painted face, and everything to do with the way they were together, the two of them.

He found out for sure a mere twelve hours later when they reversed their positions and he had Rick’s legs wrapped round his waist as he moved deep inside him. Fitting them together like puzzle pieces. Giving and taking and finding he liked both in equal measure.

 

xxx

 

Carl told me about your mother, Rick said. That where you got your songs, from her?

Well, it’s better’n whistlin Dixie, he said.

 

xxx

 

Once upon a time, he’d hardly dared to sleep, bedded down on his perch in the cell block. Too jumpy. He’d jump thinking every sound might be thunder – thunder from the barrel of a gun.

When the storm rolled through him and Rick were too busy shouting at each other to hear the warning rumbles. They were caught unawares, big fucken tank and all.

The prison burned like Rome. He couldn’t find Rick but he found Beth Greene and he dragged her after him cos he had to save _someone._

Chaos, the chaos of it. He remembered how pissed Merle had been, that time when he told him about chaos theory. Bullshit, Merle had said. Don’t listen to them scientists, baby brother, they don’t know shit. Just a big buncha thieves. Your chaos theory, I swear I came up with it years ago, all on me own, while I was trippin on acid out in Senoia.

The whole thing felt like a fever dream of Merle’s. ’Specially when the two of them, him and Beth, went tearing all up and down creation to scare up a bit of booze so she could drink away her sorrows. Who’da thought little Beth Greene’d remind him of Merle. Shouting _my stash! my stash!_ as Daryl dragged him away from an advancing horde, days into the outbreak.

Playing Never Have I Ever in an old moonshine cabin was whistlin Dixie in the face of the apocalypse. _I never been outta Georgia._ Voice cracking on a name. _Rick._ Afraid of nuthin and nobody, afraid of being nuthin and nobody again. _Just some redneck asshole with an even bigger asshole for a brother._ Not even a brother now, just one sorry asshole left on his own.

He was palimpsest, him. Scars overwriting other scars, different selves etched one over the other. If there was a key to reading him he’d lost it years ago. But Rick tried, harder than anyone he’d ever met, and damn near made him legible again. 

Without Rick, he couldn’t remember who he was supposed to be.

But after Beth, after shooting the lady cop in the head full metal jacket without stopping to think, his heart turned to stone. Too many dead in there now, flesh and blood was no match for them. Ossified in seconds, heart dead like a rock, never more to roll, if you wanted to be all rhythm an’ blues about it.

A savage cold-blooded slit-eyed killer, that’s all he was now, mean as the long ago day he screamed at Rick on a scorching Atlanta roof, his brother’s severed hand lying between them. Beg for mercy today, he’d sneer and put a bolt between your eyes.

If Rick had tried any sort of appeal, he’d have dealt him a haymaker to knock him ass over tits in the dirt.

But Rick didn’t try to turn him round as they made their way north. Needed him that way, savage as an Apache, a necklace of geek ears strung about his neck, a couple of scalps dangling from his back pocket.

It was hot, but so was feeling. Anger was cooler.

 

xxx

 

Going north was like traveling uphill, and he kept looking south over his shoulder. Couldn’t hardly remember why they were going in this direction anymore.

They made a semicircle of the vehicles and pitched camp off the road. Soon as it was done, alarm system strung up, he left them. Maybe said something about scouting ahead, maybe didn’t bother explaining himself.

He wandered up the desolate highway, crossbow at the ready, half hoping something would stagger out of the trees so he could shoot it, human or walker, he hardly cared at this point.

A bend in the road had his hackles up. Turn a corner and you could find anything. A herd. Another Terminus. A Washington-fucken-D.C. with the president himself waiting to shake your hand.

He edged forward. Nothing there but a sign on the side of the road, rusted over from the elements.

WELCOME TO SOUTH CAROLINA

_The Palmetto State_

 

He dropped to his knees like his strings were cut.

He couldn’t say how long he stayed there, on his knees, head bowed as if in prayer. Even if he’d wanted to, he couldn’t crawl those extra ten feet and cross the line.

He half expected it, even before the crunch of gravel and snap of a twig announced he had company. He didn’t react when Rick squatted down next to him, just sat back on his ass and crossed his legs.

So here we are, Rick said.

Here we are.

Didn’t realize we were this close, Rick said.

The edifice of him, it was starting to crumble. Rick must’ve felt the tremors when he bumped their shoulders together. He needed Rick to jump-start his heart, get him ticking again, if he was ever gonna make it past that sign. Otherwise, leave his bones in the haunted ground of Georgia, where he could keep company with his ghosts from here to eternity.

I want you back, Rick said.

‘M right here.

I let you go too far. Time to salvage what’s left.

Aint got nuthin left.

You do. I know you do. C’mere.

Rick pulled him to his feet. Together they hobbled forward like old men, all stiff joints and aching battle wounds. Closing the distance. Crossing it. Amazed that it was still the same air, the same trees, the same road, the same them.

You’re in Carolina now, Rick said.

Maybe there was a flicker of something left in his heart, because now he was closing a different kind of distance altogether and pulling Rick down with him to the shallow ditch at the side of the road.

He tackled Rick with his whole body, matching them up point to point. Contact, contact was everything. He began shucking off his clothes, vest and shirt first. Then he unfastened his belt and worked his pants down his legs, fingers careless and hasty. Naked, he sat back on his heels and looked at Rick, who was propped up on his elbows, watching, still fully clothed.

Strip, he ordered.

Rick did as he was told.

They rolled into each other. They tusseled and tangled, first him on top, then Rick, then him again. Like they used to do back at the prison, a kind of acrobatic foreplay. What are we doing here? Rick would say. Are we fighting, or are we fucking?

He wanted a fight, but Rick wouldn’t give him one.

Don’t blame yourself, blame me, blame me all you like, but keep your powder dry, Daryl, keep it dry for the real enemy.

Sex was sacred now. All very well to fuck like animals when you had concrete walls and two stout barbwire fences to keep the predators out. But play those feral games out in the wild, and you forget what it means to be human.

Being human was kissing like you’d just invented it. Chapped lips, curious tongues. Your face getting all scraped up from overgrown beard.

Rick knew when to let him lead, and when to take the reins from his shaking hands. Well his hands were shaking now but his powder was dry, and he held Rick rigid in his fist, wanting both the power of fucking and the glory of being fucked. So he straddled Rick’s thighs, Rick’s eyes nodding acquiescence, _I know this game_ , Rick tracing the jut of his hipbone, sharper than ever, fingertips following the angled ‘v’ of muscle that pointed south.

But Rick, for all his knowing, he didn’tknow _this_ game. Rick groaned like a dying man when he sank down on his cock, all the way down until he was flush against Rick. And that was how he fucked him. It might have been Rick inside him, Rick’s cock splitting him wide open, but _he_ was the one raising and lowering himself in increasingly desperate, erratic rhythms. Rick reached for his thighs, his belly, where all the muscles stood out in sharp relief from the incredible effort they were expending.

They both came on Carolina soil. Him literally; Rick was still deep inside him. He saw droplets of the milky white stuff scatter on the dirt and collapsed on top of Rick, eyes wide with wonder.

Guess I’m leavin Georgia after all, ma, he said.

 

xxx

 

They all crossed the state line together at dawn the next day. It was easier the second time. Bringing up the rear of the convoy with Rick, he leaned out the window to give the middle finger to the land receding behind them. G’bye, red hills! he shouted, not loud enough to be heard over the engines.

Then he settled back in his seat and wet his mouth with his canteen. Pursed his lips, blew an experimental note. He whistled softly under his breath as they made their way north.

What’s that? Rick asked him.

Dixie, he said.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by 3 tunes:
> 
> "The Parting Glass" - Irish traditional performed by The Pogues  
> "Minstrel Boy" - Irish traditional performed by Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros  
> "Ain't Gwine to Whistle Dixie (Any Mo') - Taj Mahal 
> 
>  
> 
> Please write in and tell me what you thought. I love to read your feedback!


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